On with the show!

On with the show!

It’s Thursday night here at my camp, which normally means a talent show for the entire camp to watch and while campers perform. For this talent show I was asked by my cabin to help them in a dance routine to ‘Shake It Off’ by the one and only Taylor Swift. Of course I accepted and our cabin got to work on break dance routines, trying to perfect the cartwheel, which normally turned into a rolly polly, and of course the hip jut. My girls were over the moon about performing this song in front of the camp, and would spend every free time practicing inside the cabin.

Now if you’ve ever been to camp before you might pull a face about practicing dance moves in the cabin, and I agree with you, it wasn’t pretty. For those who haven’t been to camp, cabins can be very tight in free space, so with 10 girls shaking their groove thing in our bunk, it got cozy and messy. But the girls didn’t want anyone to see their dance before the show since someone might steal their moves and songs. Have I mentioned that my girls are 10 years old? They are precious, so I was dancing right alongside them, but in the bathroom area as I had been hit by too many flaying arms to count.

As the day turned into nighttime and the talent show started, my cabin watched in the crowd as other performances went on. Two counselors sang a duet together, a camper completed the rubik’s cube in 3 minutes (I’ve only completed 3 sides), campers told jokes, did dance routines, and suddenly “The Nifty Swifty” (My idea, and I know it’s adorable) were on deck. I shuffled all of my Swifties backstage and the girls got eerily quiet. These girls can talk and move around till the cows come home, but now that their moment was upon them they were getting nervous.

So I did what a counselor could only do in that situation, I got them to all huddle around me and channeled my inner Taylor intermixed with some inspirational anecdotes to get them pumped. They were all looking up at me with wide eyes mixed with terror and excitement. So as I was standing in the middle of my Nifty Swifty on stage the moment before the music started, I felt proud. No one backed out and they all danced, boy, did they dance, some to our routine that we had practiced and some doing some freestyling. Once the song was over we all took a curtsy and shuffled off staged with giggles and endless talking on how Grace pulled off the cartwheel. That night as the girls were snuggling into bed, we played one of Taylor’s slower songs, have I mentioned that my girls are obsessed with Taylor Swift? Well today was a Fairytale.

Tags:

AUTHOR:
Rachael Ross

Rachael has been involved in the summer camp world for years. She has grown up at camp and has been through almost all of the jobs that is offered. Rachael loves sharing her knowledge and stories about camp with others and hearing about other people's experiences..